


Hungry and Hollow

by privatesnarker



Category: Die Dreigroschenoper | Threepenny Opera - Brecht/Weill
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Alternate Ending, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Blood and Gore, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Pre-Canon, War Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-23
Updated: 2014-11-23
Packaged: 2018-02-26 18:10:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2661536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/privatesnarker/pseuds/privatesnarker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Other men might have relied on a smuggled dose of poison as a last resort, a concealed blade or an improvised rope. Mack relied on Jackie.</i>
</p>
<p>A Threepenny Opera vampire story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hungry and Hollow

Mack had never concerned himself with his own mortality overmuch, but when forced to think about it had envisioned dying peacefully in his bed, of old age, surrounded by people grieving his imminent loss. In any case he wished to die a free man, and definitely not a disgraceful spectacle in front of a jeering crowd. But as he sat in his cage and time trickled away faster and faster, he saw each means of escape disappear, one after the other. All but the last one. Other men might have relied on a smuggled dose of poison as a last resort, a concealed blade or an improvised rope. Mack relied on Jackie.

\---

The hunger struck even before Jackie was all the way conscious. It forced him upwards, breaking the surface of whatever dreamlike state he had been dwelling in, and he came to, only to immediately wish he hadn’t. He was lying in the underwood at the foot of a small slope, twigs and stones digging into his back, and he felt like some animal cadaver left to rot, hollowed-out and dried up in the heat. Even moving his eyes hurt, moving anything else was impossible. According to his stomach he hadn’t eaten a thing for at least a day, but that couldn’t be right – they had left for reconnaissance directly after lunch, and then— then he had gone ahead, and then there were screams from behind, and running back he had heard the screams stop abruptly, and the only one standing when he arrived was Mack, with the attacker – and it couldn’t have been just this one man, they had been five – lunging for him, and Jackie had moved faster than he had ever known he could, and then—there the rapid-fire chain of recollection came to a dead stop. Did he win? He must have, after all he was still alive. Was he hurt? Again, he had to be, at least a concussion and maybe some broken ribs, if only he could move to make sure—

He heard the footsteps at the same time as the smell hit him. Something smelled good, something smelled like food, and the footsteps were coming right towards him along with it. No, make that two sets of them – one heavy, one light and stumbling. The lighter one stopped, the other kept coming closer. By the sound of it the approaching person should be right next to him, he could hear the fabric of their clothes rustle with every movement. Still, it took a few more seconds for Mack to appear in his line of sight. He stopped a few yards off when he saw that Jackie was awake, and seemed to examine him for a moment – it was not the sort of look one gave a wounded comrade, there was far too much wariness in it. After a while he said:

“All bright and well-rested then?”

“I’ve had better sleeps,” Jackie managed to croak. His throat felt as dry as a desert.

Mack relaxed marginally, but made no move to come closer. “Jackie, was it?”

Jackie nodded, too surprised to ask how Mack knew his name. Of course _he_ knew Mack No-Last-Name with the winning smile and the affinity for small blades, everyone did, and they all agreed it was better to have him as a friend rather than an enemy. Jackie had the self-awareness to recognize that not everyone wished to be Mack’s friend with the same fervor he did, forever trailing in his wake in the hopes that maybe some of Mack’s suave charm would rub off on him. They had never exchanged more than a handful of words, and Jackie had always been “hey, you”, if anything.

“Can you get up, Jackie?”

It was a command, not a question. Jackie felt as weak as a kitten, but made a feeble attempt -- only to discover that his hands were tied at the wrists and, from the feel of it, his feet at the ankles. He blinked at the strips of dirty cloth that seemed to have been torn from someone’s shirt. When he looked up imploringly, Mack had transformed into his usual nonchalant self, sardonic grin included. He ignored Jackie’s wordless question, or maybe he misread the content, since the only information he gave was:

“We’re an hour away from base. They’re going to be _so_ glad to see us back alive and well.”

Jackie didn’t feel terribly alive, much less well, and in any case he very much doubted he could take on an hour’s walk while tied up. He jerked his bound hands in Mack’s direction to remind him of that last drawback, but again his intention seemed to be misconstrued, because –

“Jackie, old boy, I bet you’re feeling a bit hungry right now, don’t you?”

“Please,” was all the reply he could manage. His vision kept swimming in and out of focus, but the smell – like raw beef, but better, so much better – was impossible to ignore.

“Thought so. Well lucky for you I organized something. I’ll be right back, won’t take a minute...”

He strode off into the direction he had come from. When his footsteps stopped, there was the sound of movement, Mack saying something that might have been “C’mon, get up”, and then the second pair of footsteps joined his, light and faltering as before. It was a woman, Jackie saw when they appeared together, and Mack was holding both her shoulders and herding her before himself. If not for his grip she would have fallen; she walked as if in a dream, eyes closed, swaying and stumbling. As they drew closer, Jackie’s eyes wandered from her swinging wrists and the fresh bruises on them to the angry red line around her neck, her sallow face, the trickle of blood running from beneath her hair down her temple and along the side of —

Something was very wrong with his jaw. The cloth ties snapped like paper. And everything turned red.

\---

“Well colour me impressed. A bit excessive though, wouldn’t you say?” 

Mackie’s voice cut clean through the red mist in Jackie’s head, and he clung to it like a lifeline. When the world had realigned itself he was kneeling in the dirt, and the dirt was muddied with blood. He felt it dripping down his chin and soaking the front of his uniform as he stared at what was left of the soldier before him. It wasn’t much, nothing even a mother would have recognized. When he felt like the lower half of his face was back under control, he said:

“I didn’t mean to. I saw the blood, when you cut him, and – I lost control.” Where had Mackie even been during the last few minutes? Had he stood by and watched the spectacle, knowing that any second he could be next? He probably had, the crazy bastard. Jackie still couldn’t take his eyes off the mess in front of him. He did not feel regret for the man’s death – this was war, where a lot of people like him died so that a few people like Mackie could tell tales afterwards – but for his own lapse in restraint. It always crept up on him like this, and when he noticed it was too late and he could only stand back inside his own head and observe the animal instinct at work.

“I’m a monster.” He realized it while he said it. Before now he had thought of himself as the same person he had always been, with a few new features. But really, he was only a person on the surface, and a brittle surface it was. And underneath that – who knew?

A finger snap brought his attention to Mackie’s outstretched hand next to him. He took it and let Mackie pull him up to his feet, then in close, until they stood toe to toe.

“You’re _my_ monster.” And he meant it. The look on his face was one Jackie had seen on him whenever he had finished cleaning and sharpening his knives, and was idly turning them in his hands, observing the gleam. It was the closest to tenderness Mackie’s steely eyes ever got, and to see it directed at him was almost embarrassing in its intensity.

“Anyway, we’ll figure something out.” Mackie had produced a rag that might have been a handkerchief in a previous life, and started wiping errand blood splatter from Jackie’s forehead.

“Dig up some rope, tie you down, see if that works.” He moved down to wipe Jackie’s nose and cheeks now. As long as he talked in this tone of absolute conviction, Jackie was prepared to believe anything. Mackie always found a way, he would solve this issue as well.

“I could hold you back, with the right angle it should be no problem…” Jackie closed his eyes. The touch of cloth on his jaw spelled forgiveness for his transgression. His conscience was clear. He would get another try, and he would learn. He took a moment to be intensely grateful that fate had sent Mackie his way.

“But for now… don’t think about it.” His face was clean now, with the exception of his lips. When he opened his eyes, it was just in time to catch the intent in Mackie’s expression before he darted in to kiss off the last of the blood, then move on to whatever traces were left inside his mouth. Mackie kissed like an emperor taking stock of a conquered city: as always, Jackie had gladly surrendered everything right from the start.

These days, Jackie no longer had a heartbeat – his veins were filled with a black liquid that moved of its own accord – so his pulse didn’t pick up when Mackie yanked him closer, close enough to feel every breath expand and constrict his chest. Jackie on the other hand didn’t need to breathe, so when Mackie moved back just enough to snake a hand down between them, he didn’t hold his breath, he just forgot about it. Postmortem quirks aside, most bodily functions were still entirely present, and the ones Mackie was currently after never more so than at times like this, with the hunger at bay for the foreseeable future. Out in the wild, surrounded by the scent of blood, Mackie’s hand deftly taking him apart, Jackie wished the moment would never end.

\---

It was a risk, of course, that was the main reason Mack had kept Jackie for last. Using him was like firing a weapon that might as well explode in his hands. A bit of pain, a change of diet, letting others handle the silver – it was a small price to pay for power and virtual immortality. But to attain those he had to rely on Jackie to keep it together. Coming back from the dead only worked if you had a body to come back to. But he had worked it out, hadn’t he? A strong grip and the right angle, most of all an iron grasp on Jackie’s weak and malleable mind, and his pet creature had been as harmless as a tiger cub. Of course, the main incentive had always been the prospect of a next time. This one was to be the last.

Only a few hours until the execution. He made no effort to hide the desperation, the pleading in his request. It always seemed to strike a chord in Jackie, a perverse sort of maternal instinct fitting in with the rest of his sorry degenerate nature. He knew he’d won even before Jackie himself knew it.

“Right now?”

He whispered, as if someone who heard might guess at his secret. As if Mack hadn’t been visiting his office for years. As if anyone had ever noticed the blood stains (Mack’s) or the screams (Jackie’s). As if people didn’t know, deep down, that what kept humanity going was ignorance, that it was better not to know and not to ask. Mack wasted no time on words, simply thrust his arm through the bars. Instead of obediently kneeling down and getting on with it however, Jackie clasped his hand.

“I’m- I’m afraid it’ll have to be the neck this time. I’ll have to come in.”

Mack was about to ask if he couldn’t just accidentally leave the door unlocked while he was at it, when the pressure on his hand vanished, the shadows inside the dark jail shifted as a cloud passed over the moon, and when Mack had finished blinking Jackie was in the cage with him. He started, but otherwise managed to keep his composure. He might occasionally forget that Jackie could do more than tear people limb from limb and look pretty when he cried, but it was still only Jackie. He was still wearing that look of pathetic contrition that made Mack want to stomp him like a bug and then grind his heel in for good measure. Faces like Jackie’s, hunched shoulders like Jackie’s, shaky hands like Jackie’s always got what was coming to them, teeth or no teeth, and Mack was the one to dole it out.

No time for that now. “Neck” meant Mack would have no way of controlling Jackie if things went wrong, especially not inside a cage too small for a man to stand upright. “Neck” meant he had to tilt his head sideways and back with as much contempt and impatience as possible, ignoring every instinct that told him to fight, to run, to get as much distance as he could between himself and the hands now gripping his shoulders. He felt the coldness of them even through the fabric of his shirt. He reminded himself of all the times he had broken those fingers, watched them mend only for him to break again. Now they held on like steel clamps.

“Will you – be careful.” The shaking in his voice was genuine. If Jackie had been breathing, his breath would have tickled the side of Mack’s jaw. The absence of it only emphasized how wrong this whole situation was. Mack was terrified. And Jackie would pay for it later, yes later, there would be a later.

“Yesh.” The articulation told him everything he needed to know about the state of Jackie’s teeth. As soon as his jaw unhinged he would not be able to speak at all. Mack waited for the tell-tale crack, but it didn’t come. The impatient fidgeting finally gave it away: like a good dog, Jackie was waiting for Mack to say the word. Like a gun waiting for the trigger to be pulled. Like the glint of a blade, promising deadly precision. Suddenly, Mack felt calm again. He closed his eyes.

“Do it.”

**Author's Note:**

>  _You saved my life_ he says _I owe you everything._ [...] I say _I want you inside me_ and you hold my head underwater, I say _I want you inside me_ and you split me open with a knife. [...] I swear, I end up feeling empty, like you’ve taken something out of me, and I have to search my body for the scars, thinking _Did he find that one last tender place to sink his teeth in?_ [...] and with this bullet lodged in my chest, covered with your name, I will turn myself into a gun, because it’s all I have, because I’m hungry and hollow and just want something to call my own. I’ll be your slaughterhouse, your killing floor, your morgue and final resting, walking around with this bullet inside me ‘cause I couldn’t make you love me and I’m tired of pulling your teeth.  
>  \- Richard Siken, _Wishbone_


End file.
